‘Missing Link’ in San Fernando Valley L.A. River Trail Launches

It didn’t look like much right then. The overcast sky combined with the interminable brown and gray of dirt path meeting concrete didn’t help much either, but in by spring 2016, this overlooked piece of land just north of Ventura Boulevard will be replaced with a $2-million Zev Yaroslavsky L.A. River Greenway Trail, a new half-mile trail dotted with more than 4,000 native trees and plants including Coast Live Oak, Toyons, California poppy flowers. It would connect a 2.5 mile section of the river trail from Whitsett Avenue almost to the CBS Studios and a 2-mile section from Coldwater Canyon upstream.

“It will create five miles of continuous pathways, the longest in San Fernando Valley,” said Esther Feldman, President of Community Conservation Solutions (CCS), the non-profit organization who led the development of the project, addressing a crowd of more than 140 people. CCS also helped piece together the public and private funding to realize the trail. Funding came from the California Natural Resource Agency, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Caltrans, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s discretionary Proposition A Regional Park and Open Space fund. Apart from those, the city of Los Angeles and the Studio City Residents Associated has also committed money.